fall from my fingers. These instruments of mine echo old well-known form. They curve onto the keyboard clumsily after two years of neglect. Regret leaving this bench that feels like home. I am whole in the notes. My hands have a memory all their own. Innately, they know the shape of B major. They follow the arcs of arpeggios my mind has forgotten.
While reading moments re-happen to me. I remember biting into the biggest red berries at Purchase graduation, stumbling into Luke Groskin mid-strawberry, strolling with Jesse over paths and conversation to the beech where blond little boys were waiting for us to imagine stories for them. Or suddenly the feeling of driving fast around Irvington. Taking a turn and seizing it, seizing my seat. Trees bent by acceleration as they went by. Another page, walking barefoot in bathing suit up a baked dirt path in North Carolina. Unconnected sensations surface and subside. Waking up not alone, sunlight lurking behind thick curtains, waiting. Without longing or nostalgia, these phrases of days occur to me. They seem curiosities in the collection of museum of moments. A placard gives a faint date and lists the materials. "Light, leaves, dirt and repetition" reads the sign beneath the beech tree. Familiar and distant, I'm pleased to recognize myself reflecting in, on returning waves.
Working next to someone else's bookshelf in like being watched. And I am. As a bare vine waves in the glass, I realize I have been sitting in this window all winter, watching. My mirror almost remarks I have not been anywhere else but in this lamp light spilling out into the street just enough words to say how dark it is out there beyond this room, this interminable reading. I almost believe I've never traveled farther than to tea downstairs.
But tonight the place is inhabited by beach themed bar night. Odd occasion out of the rain. After working at the piano bench, I ascend to work on my essay. Later, descending dressed down in sarong, I steal a St. A's sour and an hour at luau before returning to the Formula of Humanity, morality, and the imperative to treat people as ends in themselves.
